Boundaries

In ConfigMgr 2007 everybody’s first reaction about overlapping boundaries was “don’t do it!”, but is that the same in ConfigMgr 2012? Well, the answer on that differs per situation. In this post I will describe the three different situations/ scenario’s about overlapping boundaries and ConfigMgr 2012.

Scenario 1 – Overlapping boundaries for automatic site assignment: NOT supported! The site to which the client will assign is still unpredictable when there are multiple boundary groups that includes the current network location of the client (and of course, the boundary groups are assigned to different sites).

Scenario 2 – Overlapping boundaries for content locations: Supported! It will enable the client to get a list of all the content locations that are connected with a boundary group that includes the current network location of the client. So it creates a sort of fallback scenario.

Scenario 3 – Overlapping boundaries across a ConfigMgr 2012 and a ConfigMgr 2007 hierarchy (specific for automatic site assignment):

Supported for ConfigMgr 2012 –clients. ConfigMgr 2012 –clients are able to check the version of the CofigMgr –site and they can’t assign to a ConfigMgr 2007 –site.

Not supported for ConfigMgr 2007 –clients. ConfigMgr 2007 –clients are not able to check the version of the CofigMgr –site and they can incorrectly assign to a ConfigMgr 2012 –site.

So how can we prevent to get into one of these situations? Well, that actually easier then we might think. For ConfigMgr 2012 –sites it is possible to add a boundary to multiple boundary groups. Also it’s possible to use a boundary group only for site assignment (red square in the picture), or only for content locations (green square in the picture). So this makes it possible to use a set of boundary groups for automatic site assignment and a different set of boundary groups for content locations. This can help to avoid the overlapping boundaries for automatic site assignment.

Besides that it’s almost not possible to avoid the overlapping boundaries between the different hierarchies… The only thing that can done to stop the problems, is to stop automatic site assignment for ConfigMgr 2007 –clients. This avoids the ConfigMgr 2007 –clients from automatic assigning to the wrong site and the ConfigMgr 2012 –clients will keep on assigning to their own site.

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About

I’m Peter van der Woude, born in 1983 and I’m living together with my wife and two sons in the Netherlands.

Currently I work for KPN Consulting. At this moment my main focus is Enterprise Client Management via Microsoft Intune and/ or System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr 2007/ 2012/ CB) and I love it!